Prince of Persia (Apple 2) source code found and now on Github

Three weeks ago, the source code of the Apple 2 version o f Prince of Persia was been found once again by his author Jordan Mechner.

And today, you can get this source code of Prince of Persia on Github.

You will see on the photo boxes of cassette version of Prince of Persia and Karateka.

Source :

Categories : programmation - game

CPCDiskXP v2.3 and programming tutorials by Mochilote on CPCMANIA

The last version of the CPCDiskXP utility is available on CPCMania.

You will also find various programming tutorials, especially tutorials about using C compilers like Z88dk and SDCC, or assembler compiler like Pasmo.

Categories : development - programmation - utility

Such a nice 64 Kb demo on (Amstrad C)PC, oops...

Last week-end at Revision demoparty, demosceners have pushed further the limits of what can be done in a single 64kb executable file. Using extensive procedural techniques and compression : see Gaia Machina on Youtube.

Waiting for the same thing to happen on Amstrad CPC !

Source : Slashdot.org

Category : demo

Wake up, an Amstrad CPC demo by Benediction and Sector One

Wake up is the latest Amstrad CPC demo by Benediction and Sector One.

It was written by :

• DMA-SC/Sector One (sfx)
• Eliot/Benediction (code)
• Exin/Benediction (gfx)
• Krusty/Benediction (code)
• McKlain (sfx)
• Supersly/Les sucres en morceaux (cat art)
• Voxfreax/Benediction (gfx)

Category : demo

Impossible Mission on Amstrad CPC, review and longplay by Axelino

Impossible Mission is an Amstrad CPC platform game published by Epyx in 1986.

It was initially created on C64, programmed by Dennis Caswell and published by Epyx in 1984.

This C64 version was known for the use of digitized speech, which is lacking in the Amstrad CPC version.

You can see a video of this test and longplay of Impossible Mission on Youtube by Axelino.

Category : game

Samdisk v3.2 by Simon Owen, disks tranfers

SAMdisk v3.2 by Simon Owen is out.

The utility supports transfers between floppy disks and disk images, and is designed to work with almost any soft-sectored disk format compatible with the PC floppy controller, including some copy-protected formats.

Low-level floppy device access requires the fdrawcmd.sys driver to be installed.

Version 3.2 (2012-04-08)
------------------------
- Added general support for 1Mbps data rate, used by ED disks
- Added 1Mbps support to IMD images, using new track modes 6+7
- Added --tty option to output console messages to non-console streams
- Fixed crash reading gap data from oversized sectors (thanks Philippe!)
- Fixed crash using --verify when writing non-simple images
- Fixed gap data trimming when writing FDI+IMD images

Category : utility

Skweek is coming back ... we dont know where

Skweek is back on Facebook, we just dont know yet on which platform it will be available.

Source : JeuxVideo.com

Category : game

Lords of Midnight on Iphone still in developpement

The Iphone/Ipad port of Lords of Midnight by Chris Wild is still on the way. You can see a video of the game running on Youtube.

While waiting for this precious gem, you can either play the original Lords of Midnight game with an emulator, or with one of the various following ports :

• Icemark
• Midnight/MU (online multi-player)
• War of the solstice
• Midnight Flyer
• LoM and DDR for GameBoy Advance

Source : Ice-blog

Categories : development - game

GrafX2 v2.3, a graphical bitmap editor by Pulkomandy

GrafX2 is a bitmap paint program inspired by the Amiga programs Deluxe Paint and Brilliance. Specialized in 256-color drawing, it includes a very large number of tools and effects that make it particularly suitable for pixel art, game graphics, and generally any detailed graphics painted with a mouse. The program is mostly developed on Linux and Windows, but is also portable on many other platforms.

GrafX2 v2.3 has been released in April 2011. It can of course be used to draw Amstrad CPC screens.

Category : development

Playing on Amstrad CPC with a wii nunchuck ?

Well they do it already on a MSX, and the electronic plan is available.

Two MSX games were adapted to run using the Nunchuck controller. The games are Konami's Road Fighter and Ping Pong. The machine used is a Brazilian HOT BIT with a do-it-yourself Assembler cartridge. A Basic program loads the game and the nunchuck driver and then applies the patch. The driver can detect a Nunchuck in either joystick port and reverts to the standard port when no nunchuck answers.

Source : MSX Resource Center

Categories : game - hardware

Lemmings on Amstrad CPC, review and longplay by Xyphoe

Lemmings is a classic, a puzzle/platform game developped by DMA design and published by Psygnosis in 1991 on PC et Commodore Amiga, then in 1992 on Amstrad CPC.

You can see a video of this test and longplay of Lemmings on Youtube by Xyphoe.

Category : game

Emulating the arcade game Pac-Man on Amstrad CPC

Pac-Man for Amstrad CPC by SyX and TotO, it's a real Pac-Man arcade emulator for Amstrad CPC, but you will need 128 Kb and to import the original arcade roms inside the .DSK with an utility.

This Pac-Man emulator for Amstrad CPC is based on the work by Simon Owen for Sam Coupe and ZX Spectrum.

Category : game

ccz80 v3.1.3 a cross-compiler using a C like syntax for PC aimed for the Amstrad CPC

You can download the latest version of ccz80 (v3.1.3). The ccz80 language has a syntax based on C language, to program for Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum and MSX on a PC.

This new version corrects some Amstrad CPC librairies (and more).

Category : development

Defender of the Crown on its way back

Defender of the Crown is a strategy game for one player written by Kellyn Beck. This is the first Cinemaware title, originally released for the Amiga in 1986. It was then released on Amstrad CPC in 1989, published by Ubi Soft.

When one of three authors and a second landed on a Amstrad CPC forum, it's a powerful fireworks of valuable informations and more which appears. And it happened on CPCRulez.fr. If you kept your child's soul, it's time that I start to tell you a lovely story: once upon a time, there once was a villain, a hero and a beautiful princess...

The Amstrad CPC version of Defender of the Crown was developed by three people in about 6 months :

• Brice Rive for the programming and the copy protection (he is also the author of an Amstrad CPC emulator for MAC: CPC ++)
• Laurent Boucher for graphics, using essentially OCP Advanced Art Studio
• Gregory Clement for the audio part

Brice Rive and Laurent Boucher knows each other since the computer school right after the baccalaureate, both are fans of programming and electronics (which will be useful later as you will see below). Brice then worked on three other games at Ubi Soft for their copy protection : Skateball, Omeyad and the absolute master. These two partners have also worked on an adventure game : E.X.I.T. released in 1988 still with Ubisoft, developed in nine months between the spring of 1987 and early 1988. During the start of this creation, a few hours of work per day, a lot of time to write the script. Soon they started to work full day, and the last few week, about 20 hours work a day. Their adventure of game creators have been possible partly because they got along well, and partly because it was always interesting to note that the other did not always agree. They have never been afraid to spend hours talking to understand each other fully. Thus they won every battle of Kb. There were no losers. As long as they did not understand each other fully, they discussed. Once the case was decided they returned joyfully to their separate work. Note gentlemen that this working method can probably apply equally to life as a couple !

Brice Rive was called up just before the release of Defender. He made the forcing to complete the project before taking on the uniform. Early in his classes, he squashed the remaining bugs from a phone booth: Laurent at the other end of the line was reading aloud the screen of the Pyradev compile, and Brice was dictating corrections! Imagine the cold sweats at Ubi Soft, Laurence is still shaking by windy day...

Let's talk about the copy protection method of Defender of the Crown, which made it impossible to copy on an Amstrad CPC. Brice has used a a trick of the disk controller, which could read formats that couldnt be written. In short, they worked on upgraded CPC. When the game was released, the company responsible for the duplication contacted the them : they could not copy the BAT ("bon à tirer"). Shortly after the release of E. X.I.T. (one year before Defender of the Crown), a new version of discology appeared up which could copy E.X.I.T. Three weeks of real life business, it isn't much for almost 9 months of work(the protection was not written by them). They were paid both in copyrights, you can imagine the result of sales (pirating is bad, subliminal message). No more royalties from this moment.

There were tools to copy data on disks in a special format. Each sector had a well-defined content : code, sprites, screens, music. No directory of course, only direct access to the disk. From memory, there was one sector per track. The floppy disk controller knows how to read but not write it. This is the trick. On their developpement Amstrad CPC, a switch and a resistor were soldered between a printer port and a part of the floppy drive. The printer port, under the orders of homemade BIOS was ordering the disk controller to stop writing a sector before erasing the following sector. Ubisoft have opened their eyes very wide when they saw for the first time the game on a single diskette (sector size 6, that's 240k for 40 tracks per side or 480 KB of uncompressed data). It was a compact format... At startup, Brice was turning off the OS to install his own, with just enough, to optimize RAM usage. They have spent nights and nights battling to save KB. Brice needed much RAM for his code, and Laurent for the images. They did eat much pizza and drink much beer to work... And the cherry on the cake, a handy utility last: upload and download of their work from CPC to another with a Minitel (model 1B had a reversible modem, 1200/75 or 75/1200, with an external jack to the internal modem). Long live the serial port ! Furthermore the application had a kind of integrated chat, because the phone couldnt be used while transferring via the Minitel. This original chat/transfer program was also found with Defender of the Crown sources. The needed cable between the printer port and the external jack of the minitel was just needing 3 connexions. It was the same cable who permits to download program from commercial servers to an Amstrad CPC. When programming E.X.I.T. such possibility didnt exist still, so backup disks were traveling on a bike (well what about pigeons instead ?).

We can thank Brice Rive for providing the complete source code of Defender of the Crown to the curious. This means we can hope for new versions with more european languages supported, improved graphics (oversan screens ?) especially on CPC + with its improved palette, bug fixes (at least the princess bug). The data (music, screens and sprites) are all in special format readable by the game and utilities written by Brice. Sprites are available as OCP files, the screens in a mosaic in GIF format.

As so often, the game used only 64 Kb of RAM to support the Amstrad CPC 464 and 664. If Brice Rive could have used 128 Kb, he would have improved the playability with less disk access, the animation of sprites during battles, fix a bug that greatly diminishes the appearance of the princesses (and what is a story without a princess I ask you ?). Note that there is no cheat in the game.

The Amstrad CPC version of Defender of the Crown was made without the use of material derived from another port, no sources, no graphics, just playing for hours with the Atari ST version, well with just a rather short article about the internal of the game, as the original developers were not available. Of the 64 Kb of RAM, 32 are used for code, 32 for video. All developed solely with the Amstrad CPC Pyradev compiler.

For graphics, a hacker was responsible for extracting them from the Atari ST version (Tsuno, well known at the time), and a conversion was made from this raw extraction, with an early result needing much work before achieving some satisfaction. Laurent Boucher still has nightmares at night about the Amstrad color palette (small exaggeration) to the point he is still able to recite 24 years later palette and the interleaving in memory ... The purple was essential for shapes, three different intensities from black to white. The degraded red-orange were too mixed for that. They found their natural place where the scene was lit by a fire. Fortunately, there was still no electric light in the middle ages. Laurent Boucher has used many homemade programs for cutting and editing sprites and viewing their animation. Defender of the Crown pictures werent compressed.

Note that there is a recent version of Iphone / Ipad Defender of the Crown .

Source : CPCRu'lez's forum

Category : game

Shao Lin's Road, review and longplay by Xyphoe

Shao Lin's Road (kicker) is an adaptation of the Konami arcade game (1985), the spiritual son of Yie Ar Kung Fu. It was available on Amstrad CPC in 1987 by The Edge.

You can see the video of this test of Shao Lin's Road on Youtube by Xyphoe.

Category : game

North and South commercial remake

North and South was available in 1988 on Amstrad CPC by Infogrames

A commercial remake of North and South should be out at the end of April on Iphone/Ipad, PC and MAC and later on Android.

Anuman Interactive is working on this remake which will be out under the name of Microïds.

You can see a video of the longplay of North and South on Youtube by Xyphoe.

Source : CPCRulez's forum

Category : game

Samdisk v3.1 by Simon Owen, disks tranfers

SAMdisk v3.1 by Simon Owen is out.

The utility supports transfers between floppy disks and disk images, and is designed to work with almost any soft-sectored disk format compatible with the PC floppy controller, including some copy-protected formats.

Low-level floppy device access requires the fdrawcmd.sys driver to be installed.

Changelog:

Version 3.1 (2012-03-18)
------------------------
- Added --repair option to help combine damaged image dumps
- Added write support for D88 images
- Added support for IMD mixed sector sizes
- Added record name from source basename, if no label available
- Added more file sizes for raw image recognition
- Added verbose track output for floppy->image dumping
- Fixed IMD creation using 500Kbps instead of 250Kbps
- Fixed bit alignment during IPF track wrapping
- Fixed converting images to BDOS format when setting label
- Increased --rescan matching distance from 32 to 64 bytes
- Updated to zlib 1.2.5, using zlibwapi.dll instead of zlib1.dll

Source : CPCRulez's forum

Category : utility

Yie Ar Kung Fu, review and longplay by Xyphoe

Yie Ar Kung fu was edited by Imagine in 1985, based on an arcade game by Konami.

You can see the video of this test of Yie Ar Kung Fu on Youtube by Xyphoe.

Category : game

R-Type by Easter Egg

Unless you are a hermit or someone very busy like me, I hope you are informed that the new version of R-Type by Easter Egg is available since the start of February.

Category : game

Wolfenstrad, an Amstrad CPC demo by Dirty Minds

A new Amstrad CPC demo by the Dirty Minds group : Wolfenstrad, written by Optimus, graphics by Voxfreax and music by Sice.

You can download the Wolfenstrad demo here or on Pouet. You can watch it on Youtube.

This demo was shown at the FOReVER XIII demo competition. It uses a wolfenstein 3D like motor, already shown more than one year ago on Youtube.

It was prgrammed in C with SDCC but also in Z80 assembly.

Category : demo

Video longplay of Teenage mutant hero turtles 2 by Xyphoe, included the hidden music

The music of the Amstrad CPC game Teenage mutant hero turtles 2 has been found on the original support.

You can download a .DSK image with the music on CPCWiki.

And now a youtube video of the game by Xyphoe, music included.

Source : CPCRulez's forum

Categories : game - music

Amstar issue 1 and 3 sold on Ebay, ouch...

You really have to love your Amstrad CPC to pay 180 € for the issue 1 of the french magazine Amstar and 159 € for the issue 3 of the same Amstar.

200 € for an Amstrad CPC 664 without its screen on Ebay, it's another nice sum of money.

Be original, for the 2012 St Valentin, offer an Amstrad CPC to the person you love, seing the current price, it seems to be a beautiful gift that make her jump into your arms for a lovely ambrace (or not, just try it and let me know if it works. I wont reimburse you if the gift isnt appreciated).

For the end, a special prize : the Amstrad CPC game Meurtre en série by Cobra Soft again on Ebay for 329 €, with its physical clues).

Source : CPCWiki's forum

Category : misc

Thunder Blade HD Gameplay by Metr81

Here is a new HD video by Metr81 of the Amstrad CPC game Thunder Blade edited by US Gold in 1988.

Category : game

Bb4cpc v3 is out

César Nicolas Gonzales did update BB4CPC (v3) : correction of bugs and improvements.

Source : CPCRulez's forum

Category : game

ReSeT #8 Amstrad CPC meeting

The next edition of the ReSeT meeting is on the way, organized as usual by Eliot.

There will be 4 compétitions :

• demo : runnable on CPC6128 or 6128 Plus, without any extension
• 256 bytes, 1 or 4 Ko intro : runnable on CPC6128 or 6128 Plus, without any extension.
• graphics : all formats/modes are allowed. The entry must be submitted with its viewer program runnable on CPC or Plus
• music : any executable music on CPC or Plus. The entry must be submitted with its player. No size limit

The ReSeT Party will take place from Friday 22th (10:00) to Sunday 24th of June 2012 (18:00) at Foyer des Jeunes Travailleurs in Coutances (162 rue Régis Messac). The price is 10 euros per day for the entrance, drinks and food. You can book a double room at the party place for 20 euros per night.

Go to the web site for more informations

Source : CPCWiki's forum

Category : meeting

a music remake of Saboteur II by Alpiso

Alpiso strikes again ! A new musical remake is available on youtube : Saboteur II.

Category : music

Prohibition remake as Java-applet

Devilmarkus is working on a Prohibition remake in Java.

Source : CPCWiki's forum

Category : game

ManageDsk v0.20g by Demoniak

ManageDSK v0.20g by Ludovic Deplanque is out. Its interface is available in english, french and spanish. It features :

• create an empty .DSK file,
• add files in a .DSK file,
• extract files from an .DSK file,
• rename files in a .DSK file
• delete files in a .DSK file,

Source : CPCRulez's forum

Category : utility

Teaser video of R-type

a new teaser video is available on the Easter egg's R-type remake site, also news musics and background pictures.

Category : game

How to write a double side DSK for use on an Amstrad CPC

To write a single DSK image file you can either use :

• ManageDSK by Demoniak (windows)
• iDSK by Sid (it's an unix/macos port of ManageDsk, it seems that you will need the dsktools by Andreas Micklei)
• WriteDSK by Targhan (on Amstrad CPC only)
• CPCDiskXP by Mochilote (windows)

Beware, WriteDSK works on the CPC (you must have a PC 3,5" with the .DSK which will be copied on the same 3,5" drive or another 3" drive). It supports the CPC Booster by Antitec.

But if you want to write a double sided DSK, you will have to use CPCDiskXP by Mochilote for the moment.

P.S. : from the WriteDSK documentation, it should support double side DSK.

Source : CPC Wiki's forum

Category : utility

Moon Base III by Barrie M. Eaton, now on Android

In 1991, Barrie M. Eaton wrote an adventure game Moon Base III.

21 years later, his son couldnt find an adventure game on Android, so he ported this game, using Android features (speech synthesis for example). Moon Base III is available as a demo version (20% of the game), or in full version for 1,60 € on the Android market.

Source : CPC Wiki's forum

Category : game

Citadelle v1.1 on Amstrad CPC and ... Exelvision EXL100

In 2005 Tom et Jerry did port a Loriciels adventure game written on Philips VG5000 and Oric Atmos : Citadelle.

In 2011 he purchased a rare french computer the Exelvision EXL100. So he ported once again this game on this "new" computer, and backported enhancements to the Amstrad version Citadelle v1.1 in October 2011.

Sorry but the game is in french only.

Source : Tom et Jerry

Category : game

Bubble Bobble remake (BB4CPC) by César Nicolas Gonzales

In 1986 Taito released the arcade game Bubble Bobble featuring the twin Bubble Dragons Bub and Bob. It was converted in 1987 on Amstrad CPC by Software Creations and distributed by Firebird. Alas this Amstrad CPC version had no music, nice sprites (or not), sound effects (my ears are still bleeding).

That's why César Nicolas Gonzales (author of the CPCE Amstrad CPC emulator) started a faithful remake of the arcade version which could work on an Amstrad CPC 464 (only 64 Ko) : BB4CPC. So this remake uses the full 16 colors of the Amstrad palette, music, nice sound effects, enhanced sprites, all the original levels and final boss. It was released a few days ago just after christmas 2011. Tom et Jerry did some work on the music.

Category : game

Countdown to R-Type remake

It's 18h06, you will have to wait still 2.332.400 seconds to be able to enjoy Easter Egg's new program : the R-Type remake for Amstrad CPC in colors !

This remake is done by Fano (code), TotO (graphics) et iXien(sound). You can read Fano's interview on Push'N'Pop.

So it's still 38.873 minutes, that's 647 hours or 27 days to wait... To help you in meantime, you can go on the R-Type remake's site to find screenshots, musics, the cover, the manual, and for course the preview video of the game on Youtube.

By the way, R-Type was cited on Boing Boing.

Source : CPCRulez's forum

Category : game

Phactory v2.2 is out

Phactory v2.2 by NoRecess is available.

This new version of this development environment targetting Amstrad CPC adds a new user interface, overall speed improvements thanks to a new plugin system, a new source code editor featuring Z80 assembly syntax highlighting and some minor bugs fixed.

At the moment there is no documentation, no examples, no templates and no support.

Category : development

GameBase CPC v23

GameBase CPC v23 is available since the 19th December.

Category : game

Happy new year 2012

Happy new year 2012, I wish you a good health too and also to all you love.

Category : web site